When you look at Against the Storm (AtS) on its store page... it looks like a standard city builder.
The videos and screenshots look like a normal city builder.
I'm pretty sure it has the city builder tag.

It's not really a regular city builder at all... maybe city builder lite, in the sense that you are building roads and placing buildings...

It's really hard to describe what this game actually is, because it is incredibly unique. I've played thousands of different games and I've never seen anything like it. Bits and pieces of things sure like sim city, frostpunk, several RTS games... but what it really resembles is a cult classic board game: Food Chain Magnate, in which you carefully micro manage every aspect of your Fast Food Empire, in AtS it just happens to be a settlement. Towns do operate much like companies, after all. It's a loose example but its the best I can come up with.

You'll constantly be looking at where your workers are, what season it is, wheres the trader, do I need more grain, where are those planks at, we need one less woodcutter and two more farmers asap, we need to get on that event before it expires, I'm not sure if I should burn this to the ground or fix it up... and a lot more.

Normally, I (and I'm pretty sure a lot of people) wouldn't think of "micro managing" as a positive... but in AtS it somehow is! The best way I can describe this is that almost every single thing the game throws at you has a counter move, or a way to mitigate the negatives, of course those counter moves are often a double edged sword as well, but I find myself extremely impressed with the design of the game to contain so much randomness, yet still give you a winning chance.

Each run of the game has you trying to make a settlement that has enough resolve (worker happiness) and ability to complete orders from the Queen, before that same Queen runs out of patience and declares you a failure. You also have to constantly contend with the land or Forest (although its not always a forest of trees) which gets more and more angry as you cut into it and its secrets. All of this is of course on top of the normal stuff like keeping your people fed, warm, and housed (among like 11 other things as well).

Each run is wildly different based on location modifiers, resources the map has, events, orders, what races your workers are, what blueprints you unlock during that run. You hopefully win and get some upgrade materials for the main city where the queen lives, unlocking or powering up your ability to do better next time, eventually you run out of time and all the settlements are wiped away in THE STORM, but not your upgrades or upgrade materials, and you set out again, hopefully getting further than you did last time, but of course more distance leads to more challenges.

This probably sounds like waaaaay to much to handle, but by god I don't think I've ever seen a strategy game that is so good at having information available to you to read and learn how to play as AtS. Between tutorials, tooltips, graphs, charts, info tabs and an encyclopedia of everything, all the knowledge is there and it works super, super well. YOU CAN DO EEET.

This doesn't mean its easy by any means, and I don't fault people who don't "get it" or don't want to put in the time to learn, I'm just now getting to the Viceroy difficulty (lowest needed to "beat" the game)... but you can earn materials for upgrades even on the lowest settings (it'll just be less materials at a time), and most importantly when you do start to "get it" it's like constant moments of that last piece of a jigsaw puzzle, or beating a boss in a souls game, it is extremely satisfying.

Highly recommend this game to anyone who kinda likes city builders, but more so likes mulling over choices and then being flexible with your strategies when those choices fall flat and then juggling several spinning plates while the clock ticks away.

There's probably hundreds of things about this game I should also be saying, but I'll wrap it up here with:

TLDR: An actual unique game where you are given everything you need to succeed but still need to make a huge number of choices and then re-evaluate those choices and make more choices, you are never blocked from victory but its not easy, when you do get there: wonderfully satisfying.

When you look at Against the Storm (AtS) on its store page... it looks like a standard city builder. The videos and screenshots look like a normal city builder. I'm pretty sure it has the city builder tag. It's not really a regular city builder at all... maybe city builder lite, in the sense that you are building roads and placing buildings... It's really hard to describe what this game actually is, because it is incredibly unique. I've played thousands of different games and I've never seen anything like it. Bits and pieces of things sure like sim city, frostpunk, several RTS games... but what it really resembles is a cult classic board game: Food Chain Magnate, in which you carefully micro manage every aspect of your Fast Food Empire, in AtS it just happens to be a settlement. Towns do operate much like companies, after all. It's a loose example but its the best I can come up with. You'll constantly be looking at where your workers are, what season it is, wheres the trader, do I need more grain, where are those planks at, we need one less woodcutter and two more farmers asap, we need to get on that event before it expires, I'm not sure if I should burn this to the ground or fix it up... and a lot more. Normally, I (and I'm pretty sure a lot of people) wouldn't think of "micro managing" as a positive... but in AtS it somehow is! The best way I can describe this is that almost every single thing the game throws at you has a counter move, or a way to mitigate the negatives, of course those counter moves are often a double edged sword as well, but I find myself extremely impressed with the design of the game to contain so much randomness, yet still give you a winning chance. Each run of the game has you trying to make a settlement that has enough resolve (worker happiness) and ability to complete orders from the Queen, before that same Queen runs out of patience and declares you a failure. You also have to constantly contend with the land or Forest (although its not always a forest of trees) which gets more and more angry as you cut into it and its secrets. All of this is of course on top of the normal stuff like keeping your people fed, warm, and housed (among like 11 other things as well). Each run is wildly different based on location modifiers, resources the map has, events, orders, what races your workers are, what blueprints you unlock during that run. You hopefully win and get some upgrade materials for the main city where the queen lives, unlocking or powering up your ability to do better next time, eventually you run out of time and all the settlements are wiped away in THE STORM, but not your upgrades or upgrade materials, and you set out again, hopefully getting further than you did last time, but of course more distance leads to more challenges. This probably sounds like waaaaay to much to handle, but by god I don't think I've ever seen a strategy game that is so good at having information available to you to read and learn how to play as AtS. Between tutorials, tooltips, graphs, charts, info tabs and an encyclopedia of everything, all the knowledge is there and it works super, super well. YOU CAN DO EEET. This doesn't mean its easy by any means, and I don't fault people who don't "get it" or don't want to put in the time to learn, I'm just now getting to the Viceroy difficulty (lowest needed to "beat" the game)... but you can earn materials for upgrades even on the lowest settings (it'll just be less materials at a time), and most importantly when you do start to "get it" it's like constant moments of that last piece of a jigsaw puzzle, or beating a boss in a souls game, it is extremely satisfying. Highly recommend this game to anyone who kinda likes city builders, but more so likes mulling over choices and then being flexible with your strategies when those choices fall flat and then juggling several spinning plates while the clock ticks away. There's probably hundreds of things about this game I should also be saying, but I'll wrap it up here with: TLDR: An actual unique game where you are given everything you need to succeed but still need to make a huge number of choices and then re-evaluate those choices and make more choices, you are never blocked from victory but its not easy, when you do get there: wonderfully satisfying.